Drug Sniffing Dog Back On The Job After Snorting Heroin

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- A drug dog is back on the job at the Orange County Jail. He got sick while sniffing through inmate mail. Officers say someone was trying to get heroin into the jail when a K-9 named Bow stopped the package.

He's not the biggest K-9, nor is he the strongest. But Bow, Orange County Jail's drug detecting dog showed that he has as much fight in him as any of his fellow four-legged friends. That became clear when he intercepted a letter going into the jail that had heroin hidden under the stamp.

"When he got to that letter he started snorting and he sat and turned around really surprised and was making an ugly face and he had white powder on the end of his nose," explains corrections officer Elaine Herbert.

In all of the searches and all of the rounds, Herbert never saw her partner act so strange. Apparently, the tiny baggy of heroin in the letter opened up. Bow got a nose full and got sick.

"It's scary because we are close. If anything ever happened to him, I don't know what I'd do," she says.

Bow was rushed to the vet. They gave him a shot and he was back on the job the very next day, better than ever. That was a relief, not just to Herbert, but to the rest of the staff as well.

"Before we brought the dog in, our staff were finding drugs on the average of once or twice a week," says Capt. Stephen Pierce.

Now, it's more like once or twice a month. Officers credit the fear of being sniffed out as the main reason for the drop.

Herbert says she'll try to keep a closer eye on Bow, but let him do what he does best.

Drug sniffing dogs, like Bow, are such a deterrent, that officers say they find more drugs outside in public places here at the jail than they do inside.